The other day I went to a Sichuan hot pot restaurant with my buddies. It was a good time. The main broth was very spicy, but fortunately we also had a chicken soup broth that was not spicy which gave me an escape. The quality of the meat was fine but not very memorable. I did like the flavor of both the broths, but since it was my first time doing hot pot Sichuan style, I have no frame of reference to compare with. I enjoyed the sauce bar where you have the ability to customize your dipping sauce and made a solid sesame, peanut combo that went very well with the spiciness of the soup. What I enjoyed the most though, was the communal spirit of the shared dining experience. We eat from the same pot, so we have to agree on things like the soup broth, the spiciness and what kind of ingredients we want to order. When someone loses their piece of lettuce in the soup, there is a shared sense of grief among the diners. Overall I had a fun time and I would not mind going hot potting again in the future.
When I came home I went online to learn more about hot pot and I noticed how many restaurants had opened in my city in the past 5 years. Why did this dish become so popular all of a sudden? Some of these hot pot restaurants are franchise stores by huge chain restaurants from China with hundreds or even thousands of locations worldwide. A big name in the industry is Haidilao. Founded in the mid 90's, this company has 935 branches worldwide and has locations in English speaking countries like USA, Canada and Australia. Another chain restaurant is Zhangliang Malatang, claiming to have over 6000 locations worldwide. The company was founded only in 2008, showing just how aggressively they've been expanding in the last 16 years.
The hot pot boom seems to have come out of nowhere and it made me wonder if there was a driving force behind all this. I had a hunch that these hotpot restaurants could be a case of Chinese soft power, where the government uses food as a propaganda tool to improve their image abroad. However, some Google searches did not really get me anywhere. It seemed like absolutely no one was raising an eyebrow about hot pot restaurants. Maybe I was just being paranoid. There have been food hypes before, like sushi and gourmet hamburgers and there will be food hypes again. Sichuan hot pot is just the next dish to go viral. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
I came close to abandoning my search, but then I stumbled upon this research article by James McDougall. Published in 2020 and titled "Globalization of Hot Pot in the New Era". His article was an eye-opening deep dive into all the processes over the past two decades that make the current hot pot boom possible. McDougall explains the following in his article:
"since the 2000s, with much of China’s ambition of developing its influence, images, and soft power abroad, the promotion of Chinese food and cuisines has been backed by state-led programs, including media promotion, chef training, and other investments. The gigantic Chinese chain restaurant business model has also brought its impacts on the global food scene. While the globalization of Chinese foodways in the last two centuries was mainly brought about by the nittygritty work of Chinese migrants, the recent launch of regional Chinese cuisines around the globe has been characterized by food conglomerates backed by state plans."
McDougall's article can roughly be divided into three processes that have had the biggest impact on the gentrification of hot pot.
1. Cleaning up the business.
McDougall explains that until the 1990's, hot pot restaurants did not have a good image. The industry faced issues like poor hygienic conditions, substandard ingredients and lack of quality control. Even the use of opium as an ingredient seems to have been an issue. This Hotpot Health Hazards article from the Shanghai Star (2003) warns people about the risks of eating hot pot. In 1999 the Sichuan government began regulating the food industry with the deliberate goal to create a "modern enterprise" system. Because of stricter enforcement of hygiene regulations, mom 'n' pop hot pot restaurants operating in open spaces like market places were largely forced to shut down. McDougall does not go into detail about the impact this had, but I can only imagine that it was a big loss for local communities.
2.Financial support and the Go Global strategy
The Chinese "Go Global Strategy" became a national strategy under China's previous party leader Jiang Zemin in 2000. The explicit goal of the strategy was to encourage Chinese Companies to invest into overseas business. McDougal explains that Go Global has also had a role in the overseas expansion of hot pot restaurants. In 2018 a three year plan was laid out to support "chain outlets outside the province and overseas, establishing production bases, processing and distribution centers...driving the products and services to go global". In a splendid example of state capitalism, the Chinese government held competitions among local hot pot chains to incentivize them to become global operations. The Sichuan government also provided support to promising businesses that had the potential to grow into national or international brands, but the article does not state whether financial support was provided.
Also part of the Go Global initiative was the launch of a 13-part PBS television series called Spice Kingdom featuring on the cooking program Yan Can Cook. The show aired in 2018 and you can find most of its episodes here (only the state sponsored parts without Yan's cooking segments) or you can stream the full episodes on PBS if you live in the US. The show is state propaganda at its finest. Emphasizing all that is great about Sichuan food and culture. The final episode of the series is titled "One Belt, One Road, One World" and is about China's "New Silk Road" policy. A huge Chinese infrastructure project with the aim to improve connections and thus trade between China, Eurasia and Western Europe. While some people praise the initiative, it is not without controversy as it is also a way for China to perform nation building, forcing cultural minorities such as the Uyghur in Xinjiang region closer to Beijing. And, of course, there is also an entire episode dedicated to hot pot (see below). In the episode we see Yan visiting several renowned hot pot restaurants in Chengdu. While all places looked great and the episode made me very hungry, they focused on the more luxury dining experiences and the gentrification process of hot pot as described by McDougall is never once mentioned.
3. Standardization of cooking methods and ingredients.
The Sichuan government also launched a program to train chefs systematically, opening schools for aspiring chefs. This was a change from how people used to learn the trade, which according to McDougall used to happen through private and informal apprenticeships. Since the turn of the century more people have enrolled in such schools. Many chefs who graduated from these schools were consequently placed overseas to manage or cook at foreign branches.
Perhaps most significant change in the hot-pot industry was the industrialization of the broth base for the hot pot. Where independently owned restaurants would each make their own broth base, modern chain restaurants have factories where a broth base is produced in large quantities and then shipped to individual branches. This ensures the standardization of flavor. In each branch of the same chain restaurant, the customer can expect to get basically the same broth taste and quality of broth. This industrialization process is the main reason why we are seeing so many hot pot restaurants pop up everywhere. Because in addition to chain restaurants from China, there are also many independent business owners starting a hot pot restaurant. The industrialization process enables people with little to no cooking skills to start a hot pot business because the essence of the dish, the only thing that the restaurants would actually need to cook, can be purchased ready made from a factory. The video below shows how the broth is made in a factory.
Thanks to McDougall's (2020) research I was able to get an answer to my question and got a peek into the hot pot industry. I'm not sure how I should feel about this. Part of me feels sad that yet another authentic dish is being transformed into a mass consumption product. On the other hand, I can imagine for a lot of Chinese customers, the comfort of eating in a clean restaurant where hygiene regulations are enforced must be a great improvement. It also seems unfair of me to single out China and the hot pot industry when they are literally copying the American fast-food industry global expansion playbook. When China does it, it is more noticeable because we are not used to Chinese chain restaurants in the west. The fact that the state is backing these initiatives makes the whole process look conspiratorial, but in a state-capitalist system, it is only natural that the state would be more involved in the overseas investments of local enterprises.
Perhaps there is indeed nothing to see here and I should be moving along. Perhaps this is just business as usual in the capitalist society we live in. Yet I can't help but think about all the independently owned shops in China that were forced out of business in order to realize the gentrification of this dish. I can't help but wonder where the owners are now. Are they wage workers in a hot pot chain store, or were they able to open their own franchise restaurants? I imagine them working under the management of a tech savvy millennial that went to business school, but wouldn't know how to fry an egg, making only a fraction of the money they made when they owned their own business. I can't help but think about all of these things whenever I pass by the hot pot restaurant where I went eating with my buddies.